Written by Kalen Pruss, intern with the Energy Opportunity team at the Center for American Progress and a junior at the University of Michigan majoring in environmental studies and history, and Brad Johnson.

Our pollution-based economy threatens California with tens of billions of dollars in global boiling damages a year, a new report has found. To block plans for a clean energy economy, opponents are lying about the costs of change, but they — and the mainstream media — typically ignore the tremendous costs of inaction. A draft report by the California Climate Action Team (CAT) consolidates dozens of scientific research papers in a groundbreaking attempt to gauge the economic risks of unmitigated climate change. The biennial report argues for aggressive and immediate action for a green recovery, concluding that “any delay” in changing the status quo puts California’s “economic stability” at risk.

The Climate Action Team found that California is even more vulnerable to global warming harms than previously thought. Greenhouse gas emissions are currently outstripping 2006 projections, exacerbating the already significant costs created from climate change. Linda Adams, Secretary for Environmental Protection and Chair of the state’s CAT, concluded that “any delay in fighting global warming” puts her state’s economy in danger:

Any delay in fighting global warming would be detrimental to our economic stability — costing us billions of dollars and dampening the state’s most important economic sectors.

The impending costs of damages from inaction include:

– Rising sea levels: Sea levels could rise 11 – 18 inches by 2050, and 23 to 55 inches by 2100, from 2000 levels. The cost of replacing at-risk property could reach $100 billion, while building and maintaining seawalls and levees to protect vulnerable areas would cost $15.4 billion.

– Wild fires: Increased risk of wild fires could total $2 billion per year by mid-century, and up to $14 billion per year by 2100. Forests would burn at twice their current rate by 2085. California spent $1 billion fighting forest fires in 2008.

– Skyrocketing energy demand: Increased use of air conditioning due to higher temperatures would cost an additional $1.6 – $10.2 billion annually by 2100, more than offsetting any reduction in reduced heating costs.

– Diminishing agricultural returns: Water loss would greatly reduce the irrigated crop area in the Central Valley, resulting in declining yields that could cost farmers $3 billion annually by 2050.

– Widespread drought: Southern California could become up to 15% drier, and urban water scarcity could cost up to $427 million annually by 2085.

It is still possible to avert disaster. The report concluded that “climate change will impose substantial costs to Californians in the order of tens of billions of dollars annually, but that costs will be substantially lower if global emissions are curtailed” to a low-emissions scenario. The corporate beneficiaries of the status-quo pollution economy and their conservative allies are falsifying and exaggerating the cost of change. Their economic fearmongering would in reality saddle Americans with billions of dollars in global boiling damages.

Download the Climate Action Team draft report.

Our guest bloggers are Daniel J. Weiss, a Senior Fellow and Director of Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, and Kalen Pruss, intern with the Energy Opportunity team at the Center for American Progress, and a junior at the University of Michigan majoring in environmental studies and history.

Major United States utilities have long opposed binding reductions in the greenhouse gases emitted by their coal fired power plants. Now that reducing global warming is a priority for President Barack Obama, these same companies want to bear as little of the clean up costs as possible by asking for free pollution allowances.

A group of investor-owned utility companies are pressuring Congress and the administration to give them 40 percent of any cap and trade system’s emission credits for free. “We want to make sure we mitigate the cost impact on our customers,” said David Ratcliffe, CEO of Southern Co., which happens to be the most carbon polluting utility company in America.

However, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) testified on March 12 that providing free allowances to utility companies won’t do anything to help their middle and low-income families cope with higher energy costs caused by reducing pollution. Terry Dinan, senior CBO advisor on climate issues, told the House Ways and Means Committee that giving away allowances would not help utility customers:

Under a cap-and-trade program, firms would not ultimately bear most of the costs of the allowances but instead would pass them along to their customers in the form of higher prices. Such price increases would stem from the restriction on emissions and would occur regardless of whether the government sold emission allowances or gave them away.

Instead, low-income families could enjoy a net benefit from a cap-and-trade system if all emissions allowances are sold in the free market:

These families could be better off as a result of the policy (even without including any benefits from reducing climate change) if the government chose to sell the allowances and use the revenue to pay an equal lump-sum rebate to every household in the United States….. [rebate payments] could actually more than offset the average increase in spending on energy-intensive goods by low-income households.

Unsurprisingly, Dinan reported that only the wealthiest Americans and corporations would be better off if allowances are given away for free. Even if carbon-belching companies don’t have to purchase emission allowances, they would still reap in “windfall profits, which could be very large” from the rise in prices of goods and services that they sell. Utility companies’ pleas for free allowances are an attempt to boost their own revenues while asking middle and low income families to bear the burden of greenhouse gas clean up costs.

Our guest blogger is Kalen Pruss, intern with the Energy Opportunity team at the Center for American Progress, and a junior at the University of Michigan majoring in environmental studies and history.

A new report finds that the Southeast will benefit from a national renewable electricity standard (RES), despite the complaints of one of region’s largest utilities that there’s not enough sun, wind, or other renewable energy to move away from coal. Southern Company, the giant parent company of Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Gulf Power, has actively lobbied against an RES for years, using empty excuses to prevent renewable energy development:

Renewables like solar power and wind turbines often catch the public eye, but challenges with their consistent and widespread use in the Southeast persist.

In 2007, Southern Co. protested a 15% by 2020 RES bill championed by Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), claiming that that compliance would cost $4 billion to implement by 2030, because “the Southeast is short on wind and sun, unlike the Midwest and Southwest.” “We’re not opposed to renewable energy,” Southern’s CEO David Ratcliffe claimed, just a “sort of a one-size-fits-all federal mandate that would be very difficult for us to achieve with any economic sense.”

In fact, Southern Co. has spent only a measly $6 million on research and investment over the last five years, while annual profits grew in 2008 to a whopping $1.74 billion despite the economic downturn. A heavy user of coal-fired electricity, Southern Co. is the most polluting utility in the U.S. when it comes to carbon dioxide, and “runs six of the 50 dirtiest power plants in the country in terms of sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and mercury released.” Southern Co.’s 172 million tons of annual carbon dioxide emissions — the same as the entire nation of Venezuela — make it the only U.S. utility to rank in the top ten carbon-emitting utilities worldwide.

A new Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE) study busts the myth that the Southeast can’t produce clean energy. “Yes We Can: Southern Solutions for a National Renewable Energy Standard” finds investment in renewables to be an economic boon to the region:

The Southeast has been portrayed as a region that will face significant cost and difficulty meeting a national RES due to scarce access to renewable energy resources. This assertion is simply inaccurate. The Southeast has sufficient renewable energy resources to comply with a strong RES. Developing our region’s renewable energy potential and meeting an RES will actually benefit the region.

With investment from companies like Southern Co. and federal funding for renewable energy and efficiency (such as the $6.145 billion in the recovery package), SACE found that the Southeast could produce 15% of its electricity from renewables by 2015, and 25% by 2025. The implementation of an RES would also spur job growth in a region now suffering 7 to 8% unemployment. For example, one 20 MW biomass power plant creates an average of 177 jobs and $11.07 million in additional economic activity. North Carolina’s implementation of an RES will create 41,000 net jobs, SACE estimates. Despite the protestations of coal-fired executives, the Southeast is ready and able to become a leader in the shift toward green energy and green jobs.

The Center for American Progress explains how a national renewable energy standard (RES) would help usher in a green energy economy across the nation.